Tim Cook Is A New Power Gay

In June, The Observer celebrated Pride Week by publishing a list of New York’s most powerful gay men and women; we didn’t include now-newly-minted Apple CEO Tim Cook, as his base seems to be Cupertino. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t suit our other criteria. As we wrote in June, “gay power seems more or less the same as any other sort of power in society.” During our visit to Fire Island during we learned that young gay men weren’t familiar with gay icons, and didn’t need to be. The power they were accruing could be spent across society, not just in some separate gay world.

While some believe that Tim Cook came out today, it’s been public information for a while: he was featured on Out‘s Gay 50, though he didn’t speak on the record for it. While it might behoove him to be a bit more open, this is, broadly speaking, precisely the right balance to strike. While Felix Salmon at Reuters argued that no one should “ignore Tim Cook’s sexuality”–that keeping Tim Cook in the closet would do him more harm than good. Dwelling on the issue beyond today, at the expense of reporting in detail on Mr. Cook’s accomplishments or failings as CEO, is to keep him in the sort of separate-from-society sphere that openly gay executives who define themselves too as politicians, lawyers, and artists avoid.

Comments

I just hope he has the guts to have his own vision instead of just playing “what would Steve do” throughout his career. Steve’s vision worked because it was his. Nobody can have that level of success while trying to follow someone else’s dreams, even if that someone else is Steve Jobs.

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